New Bedford dodges a bullet

Monday

Jul 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 30, 2012 at 12:53 PM

That was one relieved group of police officers at Friday's press conference in New Bedford, where the stolen assault rifle missing for two weeks from an unmarked cruiser lay on the table at the front of the room.

That was one relieved group of police officers at Friday's press conference in New Bedford, where the stolen assault rifle missing for two weeks from an unmarked cruiser lay on the table at the front of the room.

There were three reporters, total, and one photographer. Standing in front of us were about 10 detectives and other officers from New Bedford, Fairhaven and Acushnet, including city Police Chief David Provencher and Mayor Jon Mitchell.

Let's be grateful that there were so few reporters there. This story ended well, with the chief making good on his promise not to relent until that weapon was located. Stories that end well don't attract a lot of news attention.

If there had been a worse outcome, we might well have had the nation's media swarm into the city and swarm out again after they had done their now-ritual massacre reporting.

Isn't it interesting that the Colorado theater shootings, the latest in a long line of such events, haven't restarted a national debate about gun control. Instead, we are having a debate about debates.

One clever conservative columnist suggested that President Obama file legislation to crack down on guns. The president wasn't going to fall for that one in an election year. He's even taking a risk talking about "common sense." We don't do common sense anymore in this country.

Never mind that there's a gun bill languishing in the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. But largely, there has been no major outcry about ownership of such things as assault rifles. The police at the press conference noted that Massachusetts has a stricter law than elsewhere, but nobody suggested we make it tougher still.

That's because truly, this debate isn't going to restart any time soon. Gun control proponents have been silenced. Gun proponents utterly dominate.

They won in the U.S. Supreme Court. And the American people, saturated with violence as they are, have effectively decided that these occasional massacres are the price that we pay for our freedoms. It's a settled issue.

I asked at the press conference whether the police had any idea of how many assault rifles are in New Bedford today, legally or not. No one ventured an answer.

But they're out there. Only one month ago, police arrested a city man and two teenagers sitting in the back of an SUV with a loaded semi-automatic Russian-made assault rifle. So it's completely understandable that the police were very, very worried that a weapon of theirs was out there, in who knows whose hands, with the potential to do some real damage.

Chief Provencher was so relieved that he even went so far as to compliment the media, especially our reporter Curt Brown, for getting the message out there so well that the gun had become a "hot potato." Everyone was looking out for it, and everybody knew about it, presumably including the two young men arraigned on Friday afternoon for having it in their possession.

But that might not be the case had Curt Brown not taken the small scraps of information the police first provided him, and did some digging among his sources to find out, first of all, what sort of weapon had been stolen. At first, this was not something that the police brass wanted out in the open.

More arrests are coming, Provencher promised, since these two individuals are accused of receiving it, not stealing it in the first place. We just don't know yet whose hands this thing passed through.

I'm happy for the police and thank them for getting this cleared up. But there are a few questions that I hope the chief can be open about.

How did the thief know the gun was in the unmarked cruiser? At the press conference, the implication was that this was a crime of opportunity, a routine car break-in with an added element of danger. But if that is true, was this thief so sharp that he knew what was in that combination-locked fiberglass case and how to remove it? Was it that easy? Or did the thief somehow learn about the gun, and maybe other guns, and which cars they might be in? Was the gun actually properly secured in that case? And if so, then we need a security upgrade.

We are assured by the mayor and the police that procedural changes have already been made, and I am willing to believe that, because what's the alternative? We aren't entitled to know everything about police security. And these officers and detectives have, one has to admit, done an admirable job retrieving the rifle. Good for them. Good for all of us.

Steve Urbon's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCostToday.com. He can be reached at 508-979-4448 or surbon@s-t.com.

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